The flight of the Roc launch plane is very impressive, but they have a real problem with the rocket. The Pegasus XL is not cost effective and they've dropped the plans for making a custom air-launched rocket. With Paul Allen gone, it seems like they're trouble unless they can find another backer with deep pockets.
According to this blog entry (https://minimumwage.blog.gov.uk/2016/09/30/new-minimum-wage-...), the lower minimum wage is for youths is to prevent youth unemployment. This was based on some data the government has (not specified in the blog) that indicates that that younger workers were being passed over in favor of older workers. That implies that youth workers are less valuable (or perceived as less valuable) and thus not worth paying a greater wage.
As an American, I find this pretty strange as most minimum wage jobs are low skill. Since the skill threshold is low, there's not much to be gained by experience, so an older worker isn't much more valuable. I'd expect this lower minimum wage to tilt the market in favor of hiring youths since you get roughly the same work for less. I'm curious to see what the governement's data actually is that justifies the lower youth minimum wage.
3-5 million would put Kaepernick in the same category as Chase Daniel, Matt Schaub, Mike Glennon, Chad Henne, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Drew Stanton and Colt McCoy. That doesn't sound like crazy money given the company he'd be in.
Part of the problem with drawing conclusions about 'Oumuamua is that it's the first interstellar object we've detected in our solar system. Because of that, we don't really know if 'Oumuamua is a regular kind of interstellar object or a strange one. Presumably in the near future we'll be detecting more interstellar objects. If a lot of them look like 'Oumuamua, we can probably assume this type of object forms naturally. On the other hand, if we don't see any more that act like 'Oumuamua, then maybe it's worth looking at more unlikely possibilities (like it being an alien solar sail).
There's been no legislative change, but the the Trump administration appears to be enforcing the rules as strictly as possible. Per this article from Marketplace (https://www.marketplace.org/2018/10/05/business/recent-immig...), they've ended expedited processing of H-1Bs, they're questioning more H-1B applications and they're denying more H-1B applications. They are definitely making it as hard as possible for H-1Bs within the current rules.
It looks like the NYT article is taking from this CBO report: https://www.cbo.gov/system/files?file=2018-06/53919-2018ltbo.... You'll notice that in the article and in the report, it's shown as "Net interest" which is defined by the CBO as the amount the US government pays out in interest payments minus what it takes in interest payments (CBO glossary: https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-...). So the interest payments on the ~40% of the debt the goverment owes to itself would cancel out.
net interest: In the federal budget, net interest comprises
the government’s interest payments on debt held by the
public (as recorded in budget function 900), offset by
interest income that the government receives on loans
and cash balances and by earnings of the National
Railroad Retirement Investment Trust.
... Debt held by the public consists mainly of securities that the Treasury issues to raise cash in order to fund the operations and pay off the maturing liabilities of the federal government that tax revenues are insufficient to cover. Such debt is held by outside investors, including the Federal Reserve System. ...
Becoming a teacher takes a whole lot of education. You have to get a 4 year degree plus 1 year of graduate work to get your teaching credential. For all that education you get:
> In 2016, for instance, the average teacher’s starting salary was $38,617—20% lower than that of other professions requiring a college degree.
Which not surprisingly leads to:
> Between 2008 and 2016, the number of new educators completing preparatory programs fell by 23%
And on top of that:
> at least 17% leave the profession within the first five years, a 2015 study found.
It's a crap job for crap pay. It's not surprising that not many people want to become a teacher. If we want more teachers and better teachers, we're going to have to pay them more and improve the working conditions.
It looks like they are hoping to make money by having a more efficient, slightly faster and smaller aircraft than Concorde. It also has more range which they hope will open up transpacific routes which Concorde could not do. Their goal is to make it profitable for airlines to charge about the same as they do for a business class ticket.
They also suggest that their aircraft will make a much smaller sonic boom. Possibly quiet enough to be tolerable over land routes. That would obviously be a huge game changer.
Their still building their technology demonstrator, so I'd take all their claims with a big grain of salt. They want to fly their XB-1 in 2019, so hopefully we'll have a much better idea of how well this work next year.
1976 is the only time since the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that a Democrat has won a majority of the south. !976 was definitely not a regular election. The Democratic candidate was white evangelical southerner. The Republican candidate was a northerner who had been Nixon's vice president and had pardoned Nixon. It took pretty extreme circumstances for the south to vote for a Democrat after 1964.
What are the extreme circumstances there? That the Democrat was a Southerner? So were Clinton and Gore.
That Ford was closely associated with Nixon and had pardoned him? Why would the South have cared more about that than the rest of the country? Despite the pardon, Ford won 27 states, including California, and 48% of the popular vote.
In 68 much of the South voted for Wallace, a Democrat running as an independent, and Texas voted for the Democrat ticket. In 72 every state save MA and DC voted for Nixon, so the South doesn't stand out there. Then in 76 the South voted for the Democrat, Carter.
It's not until Reagan that we see the South reliably voting Republican.
The flight of the Roc launch plane is very impressive, but they have a real problem with the rocket. The Pegasus XL is not cost effective and they've dropped the plans for making a custom air-launched rocket. With Paul Allen gone, it seems like they're trouble unless they can find another backer with deep pockets.